Some would say that the activity going on in Egypt is controversial. As an American, however, I don't see much room for controversy. The Israelis and the Saudis may call it naive idealism, but we as a country are based on the belief that a contract exists, whether it is written or not, between the government and the governed. This foundational belief states that if the governed feel strongly enough that the contract has been broken, then they have the right to form a new contract. Remember that the two parties are not on equal footing in this view. It is not far-right anti-government rhetoric to say that the governed are the contracting party and that the government works for them. This is the very stuff of the Declaration of Independence. The responsibility now rests on the sovereign people of Egypt to decide who will govern them. A similar contract renegotiation occurred on this continent in 1776. At the table were the "far leftists" of their day who believed in personal liberty along with proponents of slavery and even some religious fundamentalists. Simply because our government could easily have taken a far different form than it eventually did, doesn't mean that the Revolution was a bad idea. The future is indeed uncertain, even treacherous, for Egypt, the middle East, and the world, but history can now at least record that on this day, Friday February 11, 2011, Liberty made her voice heard in the streets of Cairo.
That's all.
God Bless.
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